That's a fair point of view, but that is literally the point of art. Not just abstract and contemporary art. The more context you have with a piece of art, the more it will make you feel and think about what it is trying to communicate.

Try and look up the painting Stańczyk by Jan Matejko.

In isolation, you'd look at that painting and see a sad jester in a chair. You may feel something, but it won't be very deep.

When the context is added for that painting, it starts taking on a completely and much more complex meaning. The most basic takeaway with context is "while the politicians, kings and nobelmen are partying, only the jester is understanding the severity of the country's predicament."

But if you take the time and start diving into the meaning of the comet outside the window, the cultural and historical significance of the court jester Stańczyk to Poland's history and culture, the letter on the table, the fact that Matejko used his own face as a reference for the jester, dive into Matejko's own life and his views, interests and concerns you will get a much greater and much more nuanced interpretation of what you're looking at. It will basically educate you on something you most likely know nothing about.

That is what art does.

Asger Jorn's Stalingrad is the same for me.

It is so miss the point of art to think that you should be able to just glance at it briefly and get anything out of it.

Art is also not supposed to be pleasant or pretty. It is supposed to move people. There is tons of art out there that bores me to tears or that I think is bullshit, but others may connect with it where I couldn't and that is worth something.

Are there bulshitters and bulshit art out there? Absolutely. One of my favourite horror satirea Velvet Buzzsaw very much takes the piss out of the art scene and the silly snobs in it.

But I think it is a mistake to think that having context for an art piece is somehow cheating when all art ever made has a title and an intent and context by default.

Also forgot to mention that one of my all time favourite contemporary art pieces was a long table in a small room with let's say 50 identical white vases lined up on either side. Next to the vases, on the table lay a bunch of cheap permanent markers. Out of the 50 identical white vases stood maybe 10 white vases with gold leaf patterns on them.

All the vases were scribbled over with drawings and words except the vases with the gold leafs on them.

I picked up a marker myself and drew on some of the plain vases, but it took me a bit of courage to start drawing on one of the gold leaf vases. At least one other person had drawn on one of the gold leaf vases but only on the white parts. I found myself instinctively doing the same.

It made me think about a lot of things. What we put value to, why, even when we are given the go-ahead, most of us still hesitate to destroy something that we perceive to be valuable even if the only difference between it and the other pieces is cheap gold patterns on the side.

Furthermore, nowhere did it say that you weren't allowed to smash the vases, but nobody had done it. You could probably do whatever you wanted to do to these vases, ans yet people only allowed themselves to do the safest form of vandalism.

I thought about the other people who had written and drawn on the vases. I felt their presence and the thoughts they had gone through when interacting with this piece. I thought about the artist and their intentions with it. The fact that I interacted with their piece made it very clear that all the thoughts they had put into their piece was realized in me as part of the installation.

I have no idea what the made of that piece was. Not a clue. But it still affected me because of how well it was executed and I understood the message(s) the artist intented. Maybe not all of them, but the main point, I got.

Contemporary art can be so amazing if one opens themselves up to it.

Counter offer: that's all expectation bias.

Counter counter offer: The title and description (and sometimes a biography of the production of the piece) are an integral part of the art.

Speaking here as an art noob who generally knows nothing of what the pieces are supposed to mean or what their societal context was when they were made and what forces they were pushing against etc:

When my arty partner drags me into art museums with huge abstract modern art pieces with just big splotches of heavily textured color (I’m thinking in particular of one giant piece filling a wall with jagged black heaps of paint) they do in fact make me feel feelings.

In my case, as in OP’s case, they were really bad feelings. I would prefer not to feel really bad and I don’t like that art. But I certainly couldn’t call it ineffective fart-huffing!